ACS students beautify their campus

Students and the ACU community united with the Texas Trees Foundation to plant trees on the Abilene Christian Schools campus.

On Oct. 9, the Texas Tree’s Foundation and KERA, a non-profit public broadcasting channel, planted 10 trees on the Abilene Christian Schools campus in celebration of KERA’s “Go Green” movement and in partnership with the Keep Abilene Beautiful foundation.

Keep Abilene Beautiful is a nonprofit organization that seeks to educate Abilene citizens about improving their community.

Selected from several campuses across the West Texas region, Abilene Christian Schools was chosen to be the start for this new movement.

Kelli Allen, a first-grade teacher and Lyndsey Steffek, a second-grade teacher, decided to petition the Keep Abilene Beautiful foundation for $1,500 to beautify their campus.

“We thought ‘what if we did things to make our campus more beautiful,'” said Allen.

With that goal in mind, the teachers submitted their petition and were awarded the grant, which included the planting of 10 trees donated by the Texas Trees Foundation, a nonprofit tree planting organization stationed in Dallas.

Tyler Wright, the urban and community forester with the Texas Trees Foundation, brought the trees and allocated all the necessities needed for this ceremonial planting.

“We wanted to place the right tree in the right place and the right way,” Wright said.

Wright wanted to show the students the amount of care and nurturing a plant deserves when first being planted. Wright said if a student places it himself, the student is more likely to take ownership of that tree and keep it from any harm caused to it.

As part of this ceremonial planting, ACU grounds and landscaping crew helped plant the trees, with the help of several fourth- and fifth-grade ACS students.

“They loved it,” Allen said about her first-grade students who were involved in the planting. “Now, they can take ownership of the trees on campus and say ‘Hey, I planted that.'”

Wright said he hopes these students will learn to take care of our community and remember the mark they placed on the ACS campus.